Who’s Involved – Private Sector: Halcrow

Halcrow representative 1: Halcrow is a global consultancy based, primarily, in the UK. We have almost 8,000 staff worldwide, working in 70 offices in 77 different countries

Enterprise Officer: The initial approach was made by myself to the company via an email, just to see if the company would be interested in supporting the curriculum for the children.

Halcrow representative 2: The company wanted to make a conscious effort to become more involved in the local community and we wanted to get involved with local school children.

Headteacher: St Stephens is in an area of high deprivation and many of our children have no experience of adults working, within their home.

Enterprise Officer: One of the main aims of developing a business partnership would be to impact on the destination statistics of the school, and to encourage a positive destination for those pupils.

Halcrow representative 2: The most important aim that we were trying to have with the children is trying to demonstrate that there's a company on their doorstep, that there’s jobs on their doorstep that they can actually aspire to. And it’s just being able to let them get their foot in the door, have a wee look around and see what's behind the walls of a big building on the street, to them, and actually see that there're real people working in there, doing real jobs.

Teacher 1: One of the several engineers who specialises in bridges for Halcrow, came in, met the class [and] delivered a lecture to the children.

Halcrow representative 2: The original idea was that, being the Project Manager on the Clyde Arc Project, was to just take them down and show them a project that this office had designed and supervised the construction of. And it was just going to be a site visit. From that, it grew arms and legs and it became an engineering lecture.

Enterprise Officer: He (Halcrow representative 2) demonstrated to them how bridges were built, how forces impacted on bridges and that the process by which an engineer would go through – from the planning stages to the finished product. It’s really good for the company because it offers a personal development opportunity for the employees and contributes to their corporate social responsibility.

Halcrow representative 1: It’s been of direct benefit to us. It’s changing our culture to recognise that we’re not just technically based, but that we’ve got something to offer the community. And it’s also giving training to our younger staff, particularly in terms of communication skills and understanding their impact on the world.

Halcrow representative 2: I think it’s a win-win situation Halcrow and the staff because we’ve been able to work with the local community and, in particular, the children – which is a lot of fun for the employees and its something different from our normal ‘nine to five’ job.